The shoulders carry the weight of your world, of the work that you do, of your families, relationships.  Responsibility is such a weight for a lot of us, as we each travel on this journey called life.  As we grow into adulthood the responsibilities can become great and sometimes overwhelming such as, mortgage/loan payments, demanding children or just making sure everyone's schedules coincide to take them to the various activities on offer.  Work responsibilities and home responsibilities, sometimes it's hard to escape that overwhelming feeling of responsibility we each put on ourselves.  Problems with the shoulders may indicate not just the weight of the world but also avoidance of your own issues: You know that feeling of constantly dealing with everyone else's needs and your obligations to others that you have little or no time etched out for yourself.

​This area of your body is the DOING  or CREATIVE center.  From your shoulders energy flows down your arms and into your hands,  where you express yourself to the world through your creative talents.   This applies to the work you do as well as the way you live your life - what you do with the time that is given to you, what you do with your relationships, or do with your feelings surrounding these things.  The shoulders get tense and rigid when you are not expressing your real needs - those things that pertain to your self care and time out.  When you are not expressing your real needs, when you are doing something you would rather not be doing, or helping someone you really didn't have the time or energy to help, when you feel you have too much to do, or when you feel scared of reaching out for help and want to pull back into what you believe to be safety and do nothing, when what you are really doing is procrastinating and doing a very good job of shoving whatever it is as far under the rug as you can get it.

Another reason for tense, sore and rigid shoulders could be you holding down or repressing something you really want to do.  That yearning inside of you that you know is there but you just don't listen to - so it comes out in your shoulders, the more you repress the yearning the more tense you may feel across your shoulders and eventually up into your neck if ignored.

Tension restricts the flow of energy and feeling.  In the process of putting others' needs first, your own activity may be stifled.  The shoulders are where that "doing energy" becomes blocked.  What is it that you are holding in, stuffing under a rug, or procrastinating on that may be blocking that flow of energy?

  What small changes can you make in order to start releasing some of that blocked energy?

The muscles are in alignment with our mental energy (what we are worried about/scared about/overthinking),  so you manifest that need (that you are not addressing)  in the from of energy that is knotted and tight in the shoulder muscles for they contain so many of your longings and burdens.  When you think about the layout of our bodies we can see that whenever we go to hug, touching, sharing, caring or being intimate with a person, that whatever we feel in the heart (for empaths this could be substantial) gets relayed up through our shoulders and out into our arms/hands. Not only does the heart energy come up and out through  the arms/hands but it also flows back the other way.  It should be a loving, smooth flow of energy through this movement with another but often we create or feel blocks from another along the way causing that stiff feeling or pain to be felt.  
For example intuitively we just feel when we are hugging the wrong person, or you feel that your kindness/compassion/love is being rejected in someway, or that you are fearful of intimacy.  This can manifest itself into a frozen shoulder, an indication of where emotional coldness or past experiences is affecting you, either coming from another to you, or from you toward someone else.

If at any stage we are locked in thought/struggle or stuck in fear/anxiety our shoulders naturally raise often without us realizing it.  If this continues over time the shoulder muscles begin to lock into that position.  The long term effect of this is that our attitude also locks into whatever thought/struggle/fear or anxiety we seem to be stuck in.

The overwhelms, the burdens of life that exist for most of us daily are seen physically in that of hunched over shoulders.  They also indicate a desire to protect yourself by closing your body around your heart.  Shoulders that are pulled back often indicate the holding back of feelings, especially ones of love such as touching or caressing, knowing that we are loved and supported and don't need to do it all alone, all the time.

Painful shoulders could well mean that you are carrying far to much all on your own.
Do you really want to say to people "Please help me, please love me, please care for me"?
Have you been dismissing your own problems and taking on others problems for far too long?

All of what I have discussed in regards to the shoulders can be boiled down to some form of resistance, that could be to your responsibilities, the pressure to perform, the need for change in your life but the fear that holds you back.  Any form of resistance can usually be found in the shoulders.

Try this...... For a few seconds feel your body, look to your shoulders are they stiff? Do they hurt? Are they hunched? When you took a deep breath did you feel the release in your shoulders?
If so, put a note up where you work to remind yourself to release some of that tension in your shoulders and to think about what you may be resisting in your life.  Is it possible to delegate or offload some of the work/feelings to another so that you don't have to do all the heavy lifting of those shoulders on your own?

Huge love and warm blessings to you all

Our bodies can tell us so much about what's going on inside of emotionally if just take the time to listen.  What a lot of people don't realize is that physical symptoms that arise in our bodies in the form of disease, injury and sickness have a lot to do with our emotions and how we do or don't express them.

Think of the neck as a walkie talkie, a two-way communicator, sending messages both physically and emotionally.  What we need to survive, food, water and air are taken in and swallowed down, as is any positive or negative input from other people and the world that surrounds us.  At the same time, emotions, thoughts and feelings are expressed outwardly through using our voice and lips.  Because of this backwards forwards motion, the neck forms a bridge if you like between our thoughts and our feelings, between the mind and the heart space, as well as between the mind and the physical body as it sends signals to act or react.

It is at this junction point (the neck) that we can create a natural mind/body split, where one part of our personality becomes somewhat isolated from the other - the more energy put into one focus of your personality or nature the more lack there is in the other and this junction quickly can become out of balance.  

This junction point when split can create a world of tension or even stiffness in the neck.

Some questions to ask yourself in relation to this physical issue that stems from a possible emotional issue you may be experiencing.

• Do you need to listen to your feelings a little more?
• Do you need to speak from your heart?
• Is there a constriction that you are feeling in life, your neck and you need to be released from? 
• Are you up in your head and have a need to put less energy into thinking and more into physical exercise (the other half of this junction point)?

Another are of thought to be looked at when this junction point becomes stressed and restricted is a possible rejection of your body.  This could perhaps have come about due to past abuse or because of a disability.  This very well may cause that same split of the junction point (neck) where there may be a lack of energy (flow) moving through the neck into the body, a lack of relationship with who you are as a physical being.  Because of these thoughts/conversations you could well be creating a disconnect from mind and body without realizing it or being aware of the core issue that has created it.
Ask yourself this:

• Do you feel like a stranger in your body? Does it feel unfamiliar and something you just drag around with you because you have to, not because you want to or love it?
• Do you feel your body as energetic, vibrant and purposeful in your life?

One of the necks most awesome of jobs is to keep that great big heavy head of ours upright so we can look forward in life.  A head that's bowed low or drooping implies a feeling of hopelessness, giving up on one's self, or an inability to face the road ahead.
Another feature of the neck is it's range of motion allowing us to see from different angles and directions, embracing a much larger space than the one right in front of us.  This implies an openness of mind and acceptance of other's views, not just our own.  Stiffness or little motion indicates resistance, usually to other ways of thinking; it's as if you were wearing horse blinders (blinkers) that prevent you from seeing any other option/viewpoint other than the one right in front of you.  If this is the case ask yourself these questions.

• Are you feeling stubborn and only looking at your own view point instead of taking others suggestions as a possibility?
• Is someone in your life asking to much of you and could be considered a "pain in the neck"?
• Are you feeling resistant or prejudiced toward someone?
• Is your attitude showing signs of becoming narrow-minded?

A stiff/sore neck may also indicate an inability to make a decision (again a junction point or cross road issue) literally not knowing which way to turn.  Such stiffness limits the amount of communication and feeling passing between the mind and body.  The neck contains your voice box, so it is intimately connected to the way in which you express yourself.  If this area is blocked or stiff it creates a feeling of lack of expression from within or not knowing how to speak your truth outwardly.

• Is something or someone emotionally strangling you?
• Are you holding back your feelings?
• Are you afraid you may hurt someone's feelings or that your feelings are too strong to express?

Being that your neck is the most narrow part of your body the flow of energy can get restricted here very quickly.  Your neck is a place where you can hold a lot of guilt.  

• Is there something you need to forgive yourself or someone else for?
• Is your pride getting in the way?

The throat (Voice-box, Throat Chakra, Thymus) is the point where your soul enters and leaves your body.  A blockage in the throat can cause issues of not wanting to stay in your physical body, which directly ties in with that disconnect of mind and body.

If you have stiffness in the neck or are experiencing soreness of some kind look at where in your life you are being inflexible or not willing to look at other possibilities. Just maybe you have your head on backwards steering at the past and judging yourself instead of seeing the big picture and how far you've come.

I hope that this insight into the emotional causes of a stiff/sore neck has sparked some aha moments for you, where you can take a look at what's happening for you emotionally in order for the physical symptom to disappear.   Let me know in the comments below If this has helped you in someway and allowed you to release the tension you may be experiencing through the disconnect of mind and body.

With Love and Warm Blessings

It doesn't mean criticizing, judging,  bullying yourself or feeling guilty.  You are just seeing yourself as you are, observing your body, how you are interacting with the people around you, your mind and how you might be feeling.  The more we begin to notice, the more we realize our bodies tell us so much more than what's sitting on the surface.

Let's take Hay fever as an example.  This can be one of the most annoying allergic reactions around and I know this first hand! Runny noses, watery eyes, itching non stop.  Yes there can be environmental causes at play here, especially when those pollen counts go through the roof.  However if we look a little deeper hay fever can actually be a very physical response to an underlying emotional issue we have not become aware of, or choose not to look at in ourselves.  Go the body for showing us what sometimes the mind can't see.

Allergies can indicate an intense emotional reaction to situations we surround ourselves in, a reaction of withdrawal, resistance in some way, and a fear that comes about leading to isolating ourselves, more often than not induced by stress.  To breathe is to be inspired in so many different ways, not to mention the balance it brings.  When we are clogged up and struggle to breathe what is it that we are pushing away from really?  Ask yourself these questions to draw out the core issue of this nasty bout of hay fever:

• Are you feeling limited in some way or blocked, unable to break free of old patterns and behaviors?
• Are you resisting self nourishment or inspiration?
• Have you been spending to much time up in your head and not acknowledging the balance that is needed within to get back to creativity, playtime and creativity?

Hay fever or when it gets to that intense feeling of Sinusitis (or infection) can also come about when we choose not to deal with grief and the healthy releasement of tears.  The pain in your face can be linked to not expressing inner anguish, the unexpressed grief accumulating inside of you; If you experience a temperature with it, this shows the intensity of the build up of feelings, the heat of any emotion experienced.  Ask yourself:

• Do you feel loved in this moment? Is their a deep need felt within to be loved by someone?
• What do you need to do to release the blockage, to become unstuck and unclogged within?
• Look at any other senses that are being affected, does this tie in with the same internal struggle?

In short....Are you struggling with emotional congestion that has now boiled over into the form of physical issues (hay fever)?

Becoming more aware allows us to move through the physical issue a lot faster by acknowledging what is really going on internally for us.   This way our bodies don't start making the issues on the inside a problem on the outside.

Love and Warm Blessings